by CJ Cherryh
‘No!’
Mouseling, that's not kind to him. That's the most selfish thing you can do. And if he kills you, you understand, you won't be the last he'll get. You listen to me: listen! Your grandfather and your grandmother and your mother were all wizards. That never should have happened. Your mother is, so to say, twice-born: her mother and her father both were wizards; and you're thank the god Pyetr's daughter and not mine and not Chernevog's, or I don't know what you'd have been, do you understand me? Wizard-blood is far, far better diluted: you already have it in too large a measure to handle easily, and we've done everything we could to see you grow up without killing your father or calling up something no young wizard would know how to deal with. That's still a danger. You have a very good heart, and hurt as you surely are, if I've taught you anything, you'll hold back what you can do about what's happened and think instead about what you ought to do. If we haven't taught you that—then we're all of us in trouble.''
Her hands gave a little twitch in his, but that was all. They remained limp and cold. Finally she looked into his eyes, really looked at him, as if she were searching for something, and said, ever so faintly, ‘Do you really love me, uncle? Do any of you really love me?''
‘With all our hearts, mouseling. No wizard has to have a child. No wizard can have one against her will. You were the most terrible risk your mother could take. And we had to get your father away from you, both of us, when your temper made you dangerous. He'd have held you, god, yes, Pyetr's held you while your mother and I just held our breaths. People do love you. You don't have to want us to. And I doubt you had to want Kavi Chernevog to, either. Someday when it hurts less I'll tell you about him.''
‘Tell me now.’
‘No, mousekin. There's too much that's dark in that story, that you don't need to hear today. But there's a lot that's not dark at all, and I'll tell you both parts when I do.’
‘I can't wish him away until I know, can I? —Because you're telling me to do something I'm not sure of; and magic won't work when I doubt. Will it?’
She had him on that one, fair and hard. But there was too much of that story to tell here, perched on a rail in the stableyard, and with Eveshka as upset as she was.
‘First we'd better make sure your mother's all right.’
‘She didn't have to be so cruel. I don't feel the least bit sorry for her.’
‘You don't know what she felt, either—finding him with you, in that particular place? Part of that was pain, child. Part of that was remembering; and part of that was the shock of learning he wasn't as peacefully dead as she thought he was. Chernevog went through hell in his life. I assure you, he's going through it now. And your mother more than saw it—she felt it. It wasn't just her child she wanted to save. It was him.’
She was listening, she was listening very hard now. The color was back in her face. Her hands were no longer lifeless. They were clenched in his.
‘Your mother,’ Sasha told her, ‘is one of the bravest people I know, and she has a kinder heart than you could imagine. But she would never give you her heart the way I just did—not to a child. And that's true in several senses. She doesn't want you to know her. She specifically wants you not to know her until you're grown. And even then—she may doubt it's good for you.’
‘Why?’ There was indignation in that question. And pain.
He said, ‘Because she's afraid you'll think too much about her mistakes, and maybe, by thinking about them, fall into them.’
‘How can I avoid them if no one tells me what they are? Kavi Chernevog was her big mistake, wasn't he? And she never told me, no one ever told me except my father, the other day—and he didn't tell me what that mistake was! How am I to know anything?’
He laid a finger on her forehead. ‘With that, mouseling. With your own intelligence. There aren't any right answers lo certain questions. There are best answers. But if you've left anything unconsidered in what you do, that's the thing that will most surely haunt your sleep at night. Do you understand me?’
Very softly, after a moment of looking into his eyes: ‘Yes, uncle.’
‘Good,'' he said, and stood up and pulled her to her feet. ‘Good for all of us.’
3
The whole house felt charged with lightnings, which called to mind what her father had said about mother and thunderstorms. Ilyana made herself very quiet, coming through the door with uncle Sasha, and found her mother sitting on the bench in front of the hearth, her father sitting on the floor next to her. Her father's worried glance tried to warn her; but she knew. She knew. She kept all but the most shallow, immediate thoughts out of J her head, and carefully bent and kissed her mother on the side of the face.
Her mother suddenly reached and caught her skirt. She panicked, then remembered uncle Sasha was there to protect her and made no effort to escape, while her mother hugged her so hard it hurt.
She knew she ought to feel sorry for her mother. She knew she should think about her mother's unhappiness, but she could not, right now. She found only pity enough to do the dutiful thing and put her arms about her mother's shoulders. Her mother's hair still had tiny twigs caught in it, the braids were coming undone; she had lost the kerchief somewhere, and torn her sleeve, and scratched her cheek on some branch, us it looked: she had run down to the bank, her mother actually must have run, when she could hardly remember her mother running in her life—
Which was one of the problems with her mother, dammit, and it did not make her feel any sorrier for her, it made her feel nothing but angrier, if she let herself think about it, and she did not want to do that. She sat, quietly, smoothing her mother's hair, wishing her thoughts to herself.
‘Mother, I'm upset. I'm thinking about it.’ Without her intending it, it turned out to be a recitation, word for word her mother's own example to her what to say when things got out of hand; she decided her mother's exact words could hardly upset her, since her mother did not approve the things she thought on her own. She tried not to want her mother to let her go, she tried not to want anything, which with nothing right, was hard. So she just wanted all of them to feel better, instead, and for her father not to be upset. After a moment her mother let her go, took hold of her hands and looked up at her with eyelashes damp and tear trails on her face.
‘Ilyana. Child—’
(I'm not, mother, not as much as you think.)
‘—I didn't aim at you.''
Her mother was holding out for an answer. Ilyana said, as steadily as she could, ‘Uncle explained that.’ She thought maybe she could get the breath and the wit to go on and explain things of her own, how long she had known her friend, how he had never hurt her, but she could not get it out in time.
‘He's not safe, Ilyana. He's not what you saw.’
‘I know. Uncle said he was a hundred years old. At least. He said you—’—died, she almost said, but that was not something to talk about with her mother upset as she was. She meant to say: Mother, he grew up with me—
But her mother squeezed her hands till the bones ground together and said, ‘Ilyana, don't ever call him back. Do you hear me? You don't know him. He's not anything you possibly understand right now.’
She thought, You don't think I understand anything. But I do, mother. Things like getting half the truth. And lies.
Like things you shouldn't have done.
Father has to be upset with her. With him. With me. God, what can he think, seeing me with this same man—
Who's not really fifteen years old at all.
Of a sudden she could not bear to face any of them, could not think how to get free of her mother's hold: she just said: ‘Let me go. Please let me go—’ and thought she was going to be sick at her stomach.
Her mother wished not, her mother was wanting to know what she was thinking, and she jerked her hands from her mother's and backed away, hitting the table so it screeched behind her. The whole house creaked, the domovoi complaining.
Her father grabbed her and hugged
her so hard she could scarcely breathe. She said, ‘I'm sorry, papa,’ the word she had used for him when she was small; and stopped thinking and let him hold her until she was dizzy.
‘Pyetr.’ Uncle's voice. Uncle's touch lighted on her shoulder, and her father let her go. ‘Pyetr, let me take her up the hill tonight. I think it will be better.’
Like a baby, she thought, sent up the hill to stay in uncle's house till her tantrum stopped. She drew herself free and lifted her chin, as grown-up as she knew how to be, ‘No, no, I don't need to, it's all right. I'm sorry. I'd like my supper. Then I'd like just to be quiet a while.’
Her mother touched her shoulder, said, ‘I'll get your supper. Sit down, dear. Sit down.’
She did not know how she could face her father across the table. She winced as her mother wished something, but it was not at her.
Her father smoothed the hair at her temple, and said, in a voice so shaken it hurt to hear, ‘Mouse, I knew him. We, were enemies and we weren't, and you saw him the way he was when your mother met him.''
‘Every year since—’ Now it came out. She caught her breath, thinking, God, I shouldn't have said anything, I don't want to talk about that—
Her mother said, ‘Ilyana—every year—since when?’
Damn it, she was eavesdropping, her mother was probably passing everything to her father and her uncle, every private thought she had.
She wanted not to talk to them. She wanted to faint away and not deal with any of it.
And she did.
‘Mouse?’ Pyetr asked. She looked so pale, and so sad, and so frighteningly still against the pillows, in the lamplight of her bedroom.
Sasha said, at his side: ‘Wake up, mousekin. It's all right. We won't talk about it. Your mother's bringing some supper for you.’
She had just become a weight in Pyetr's arms, just gone out of a sudden; and scared him so he was still shaking, scared 'Veshka, too, he understood. Sasha was the calm one, Sasha still was: ‘Wake up,’ Sasha said; and without any fuss at all, Ilyana's eyelids fluttered and she began to wake up.
A little confused at being in bed, maybe. ‘You fainted, mousekin. You scared me.’
‘I'm sorry,’ she said, hushed, as if breath were still very short. ‘I'm really sorry, papa.’
‘Ilyana, it's not your fault. Nothing's your fault. I'm not even mad at Chernevog. I was as close to a friend as he had in the world.’
Maybe she did not quite believe that exaggeration. But it confused her. A great many things surely confused her—and confusion might multiply wishes, but it subtracted effectiveness.
‘We'll talk about it,’ he said. ‘Later. Are you going to be all right?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I'm fine.’
‘A fib, but I'll take it for a promise. Don't do that to me again.’
‘I'm—’
‘—sorry. You've been talking to your uncle. Sorry's his word. Don't be sorry: you don't have to apologize to anyone. There's not a thing in the world you've done wrong, except I wish you'd told us a long time ago what was going on.’
''Mother would have said don't.''
He understood that. Eveshka said 'don't' to anything chancy. He was not in the habit of telling Eveshka when he had decided to risk his neck, either.
Your daughter, Sasha had said.
He said, ‘I got drunk once, jumped a fence that scared the hell out of me. Risked my horse's neck, not mentioning mine. It didn't scare me at the time, of course. But to this day I have nightmares about that fence coming at me.''
‘What's that to do with—?''
‘Just that's who your papa is. A fool, sometimes. And prone to rush into things. But your papa didn't have anybody worrying about him. He never had anybody who gave a damn whether he survived. Mouse, you do have. Break your neck and you're going to make all of us very unhappy. But not with you. Do you understand what I'm saying?’
Maybe he shocked her, telling her things like that. It was the speech Sasha had talked about this morning, not the one he would give his daughter: the one someone should have given him—if anyone had cared whether he lived or died, before Sasha had begun to.
She said, faintly, ‘I didn't think it was dangerous. I still don't. He never, ever hurt me.’
‘I believe you,'' he said, on an uneasy stomach.’I almost believe his intentions. But I don't believe he can hold to them.'' He remembered Eveshka's touch—then, in those days when it was both dizzying and deadly. He knew the compulsion—on both sides; and thinking of his daughter trapped in it, his daughter locked in an embrace like that— ‘It's like vodka, mouse. It corrupts your judgment about the next cupful. Or the next wish and the one that patches it. You could die like that and not care. I know what you're not telling me. You don't have to tell me what it feels like. I’ve felt it.’
Stop, he heard her say in his head; and Sasha laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘Mousekin,’ Sasha said. ‘I know. It's all right. Rest. I'll stay here in the front room tonight. I'll be here. I'll bring you your supper in bed. All right?’
‘All right,’ she said. And Sasha got him out the door.
Distress hit him then, like a weight in his chest: Eveshka's heart settled against his and he stood there, unable to move, scarcely able to breathe, the pain was so acute. Eveshka was finishing Ilyana's supper tray. She laid a napkin on it and gave it to Sasha to take into the room, all quite easy, quite calm. He realized that he was in the way: he opened the door for Sasha and shut it after him.
‘How is she?’ Eveshka's voice asked him; but her heart had already found that answer and the anxiousness smothered, it suffocated him.
‘She's doing a lot better,’ he said, struggling for calm. ‘Eveshka, listen to me, you've got to give her more rein. A lot more, not less. Trust her.’
He felt her panic arguing with his—he remembered things a man did not want to remember about his wife: and remembered things about himself, the young fool who had gotten himself skewered by a jealous husband, ensnared by a rusalka and damned near killed by Chernevog—before he had carried Chernevog's heart a while himself: he knew Chernevog, by that, the way he knew his wife, the way he knew Sasha, and all the pieces of their lives came together in him, or refused to go together at all—
He forced them to meet, dammit, one with the other, in his own opinions of what to do: trust Ilyana, he thought; and he thought unawares of Ilyana and Chernevog; and dying, and killing, and a watery cave that figured in their nightmares. He propped himself against the fireside stones, breaking a bit of kindling in his hands, snap, snap, snap, thicker and thicker pieces, until he could not break them any longer, then did break them once more. There was blood on his hands, then.
‘God, you fool,’ Eveshka whispered. Her heart struggled to escape his. She wanted her daughter to herself, she gave no credence to his unwizardly opinions that were blind to the dangers reaching out for them, out of magic, out of that unnamable place magic used—
He said, leaning there, sucking a bloody knuckle, ‘You've made a mistake, wife. You understand me. Beat the horse— and she'll kill you, sooner or later. Don't do it with my daughter.''
He was not talking to the heart lodged next to his, he was talking to a wizard, doubly and triply born—who found his daughter a cipher, and hurt his daughter because she let her nightmares override her good sense—
‘A mistake,’ he said, ‘that's still able to be fixed. But not by doing the same thing your father did to you. Don't hedge her about with rules, 'Veshka. Chernevog will be back, I don't know when, but he'll be back: I doubt you drove him that far. This isn't something that's solved and panic won't help.’
‘The vodyanoi is awake,’ Eveshka said quietly, turning her back on him. ‘Sasha drove him off. More than that may have slipped its peg with what happened out there.’
Glistening black coils, sleek as oil; cold, and mud, and bones. She was making him remember. He was dizzy for a moment, and the wife who feared anything unplanned came face to face
with the boy who had walked The Doe's rooftree drunk, on a dare—that boy and the hard young man who had done it thereafter on bets—for money, because in Vojvoda, you had to have money or you fell further than that. . .
Eveshka did not understand that place. But she knew fighting for what she wanted, and she knew fighting to stay alive.
‘What's a rusalka,’ he asked her, in that one point of understanding, ‘but a wish so strong it drinks the life out of anything it wants? How close will you hold Ilyana? Or me? If it's that again, 'Veshka—then, dammit, stay to me. Don't do it to our daughter!’
There was anger in front of him, then, terrible anger inside him. And fear. Her heart wanted free of obligations. It wanted—
But her heart had no magic to fight with. Neither did he.
The anger in front of him did. The anger could do anything it wanted. It would be a fool to do any of those things to a man who had her heart, and they both knew that—but that heart began to go this way and that in panic at the thought of it.
He said, ‘'Veshka, is the word 'wrong' so damned difficult? Take it back, 'Veshka, I know it hurts, dammit—but I don't like what I'm seeing.''
She looked at him coldly. She walked away and picked up a basket from the stack in the corner, and put it on the table.
Packing, then.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked.
‘It means you can do what you like with her. Maybe you can do better.’
Her heart was saying something else. It was feeling betrayal and terror and wanting fools it loved to do exactly what it thought safe.
She wanted him to do what she said, wanted not to hurt him any further, and wanted out of here before she killed him—because she was drowning in confusion—
And when she could not breathe, she would grab anything and anyone that could give that next breath to her—she would do it again and again, the way she had done, to live, her way—
He held on, he shut his eyes to shut it out, but the panic was not coming from the outside, it was inside him, a panic that must not get to his daughter—he could not let it get to her—